An unfeeling system

The tragedy at the Uphaar cinema hall in Delhi evoked the predictable reaction — shock and amazement at how susceptible Indian buildings are to fire. But behind that susceptibility there lies reason for even greater disquiet. In the weeks since the fire, the administration has found it impossible to figure out who should take the blame, and should be made to pay for the enormous loss of life. Should the builders pay, or their stooges who actually ran the cinema hall? Or should it be the arm of the administration which granted them licences without bothering to check the premises? There appears to be no established methodology by which blame can be apportioned and liability fixed. In earlier cases, where commercial complexes were destroyed in blazes, liability was fairly easily fixed: it obviously lay with the builder-cum-operator, who had skimped on the safety measures he had assured. But in cases where complexes are managed by agencies other than the builders, easy answers are hard to come by.

It will take much heavily-argued case law, and possibly even more loss of life, before suitable standards can be evolved in cases like Uphaar. It would be better for the administration itself to lay down the law once and for all, and install fail-safe monitoring systems as well. Right now, it is tacitly assumed that where responsibility is to be borne by any arm of government, appropriate relief’ from the prime minister’s or chief minister’s fund constitutes adequate compensation. It may indeed be adequate, but it does not perform a function of reparation payment — it does not penalise the guilty. The injured parties are compensated, but there is nothing to discourage the agencies responsible for an accident to mend their ways, because they are not hurt in any way. A system which can gauge the extent of liability without the need for legal interpretation in every case would see that this very important function is served.

But finally, the real enablers of safety will be the public, the very people who are harmed by its absence. They must be better aware of their rights, and be more aggressive in claiming damages. Companies and governments in the First World are very sensitive about the rights of their consumers because they have been repeatedly taken to task by them. Nearer home, it may be recalled that there was precious little action on the Delhi anti-Sikh riot cases until witnesses brought forward their own charges. In the case of Union Carbide, the government decided to represent all the plaintiffs only when they started taking their cases to ambulance-chasers from the West. In the Uphaar case, too, the defendants will remain mysteriously elusive unless the families of the victims get their act together. They have taken the first step by forming an association to take on what they rightly see as an unfeeling system, but it will take sustained pressure to bring the guilty to book. They deserve support in every form, because they are dealing with something larger than their own individual tragedies. They are trying to humanise a system that has become so impersonal that it is monstrous.